I had dinner with a Civil Disobedience Veteran ...

last evening, and didn't even know it until dessert.

We met at a little half bar/half bistro (with great food) to discuss a volunteer effort we are organizing. I had worked with this woman several times and had always been impressed with (at 80+ years old) her energy, commitment and clarity of cause; but I knew very little of her background.

About half way through dinner, a group of 20-30 somethings were seated at the next table over. As their alcohol consumption increased, so did the volume of their conversation ... it was not long before everyone nearby knew this group supported Ron Paul, did not trust the government, at all; and felt that Ed Snowden is a "National Hero" and a "True Patriot" (their words).

The group began expressing their admiration of Snowden's "brilliant exit strategy" ... e.g., disclosing to Greenweald, then going to HK, then when the heat got turned up, releasing information to the Chinese "to let the government know not to fuck with him" (drinks raised and cheers all around) .

I noticed my dinner companion became really quiet and almost downcast. I assumed that she was being disturbed by the group. But she told me she was pretty agnostic to the whole snowden thing ... she hated that the government was collecting the information AND she hated that snowden had elected himself to be the arbitrator of what was safe to release ... "how could he know?"

But mostly, she was saddened by the groups take on what snowden did. She related that she was at Selma (and showed me the scar), she was at Chicago; she was at Stonewall; but her generation of C/Ders were different from what is being produced now. She asked me: "How many police brutality law suits MLK filed ... How many came out of any of the sit-ins?"

She pointed out that everyone in her peer group knew they were breaking the law with their actions and going to jail (and the beatings) were part of the journey; whereas, the modern day protesters want to have it both ways ... they want to be free to break whatever laws they feel are unjust, protest against the corrupt government and all. Then, they want to be protected (not pay a price) for their "noble sacrifice" ... oftentimes demanding that that protection come from the very government they are disobeying.

2. Bullshit!

Try telling that to the activists in North Carolina.

Most arrested in 'Moral Monday' protests from NC

Raleigh, N.C. — Police records indicate that 98 percent of those arrested during the "Moral Monday" protests at the General Assembly are from North Carolina, despite claims by leading Republicans that the rallies are packed with people from out of state.

The NAACP-led protests marked their sixth week at the General Assembly Monday. Organizers have used the rallies to decry what they say are harmful policies put forward by the Republican-controlled legislature. They have raised objections to tax reform packages making their way through the legislature, as well as bills aimed at restarting the death penalty, curtailing unemployment benefits and allowing for private school vouchers.

When they fail to leave, the General Assembly Police, with help from the Raleigh police, arrest protesters who fail to clear the area.

Of the 388 people who have been arrested over those six weeks, arrest records indicate only eight – or 2 percent – are from out of state. While not all who come to the rallies get arrested, the records provide the best verifiable snapshot into the makeup of the protesters.

10. What the OP claims was said by Ms Construct

" the modern day protesters want to have it both ways ... they want to be free to break whatever laws they feel are unjust, protest against the corrupt government and all. Then, they want to be protected (not pay a price) for their "noble sacrifice" ... oftentimes demanding that that protection come from the very government they are disobeying."

The language is about 'the modern day protesters' and in no way does it imply that the speech is intended for right wing protesters contrasted with liberals.

It says what it says. This OP once posted twice in a day that 'Stonewall does not count' as civil right action. Then Obama said it did. Now the poster knows people who were there. Credibility is not ringing out.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022084689

61. So she opposes the work of the Southern Poverty Law Center as well?

A federal judge has denied a request by the Birmingham Police Department in Alabama to dismiss a lawsuit the Southern Poverty Law Center filed against the department for its brutal use of pepper spray against the city’s public school students.

Not sure why using a citizens right to recourse in the courts bothers you or 'her'. Why does it? Litigation is a very important tool of liberation. Does 'she' have any reasons why she thinks the police should be free from all litigation?
I think of the arrests and beatings and harassment endured by early AIDS activists and this woman claiming they did not exist, obviously she skipped that entire movement, as did you apparently. To claim those things did not happen is a shame and a lie. Yes, lie.
Your character is 'in her 80s'? How nice for her. Many of the bravest activists I knew never saw 40. Those are the people your character sneers at and claims have bad motives. They were fighting for their lives, and for the lives of those coming after. To dismiss their work is simply the action of a small and bitter mind.

66. Probably not ...

I think of the arrests and beatings and harassment endured by early AIDS activists and this woman claiming they did not exist, obviously she skipped that entire movement, as did you apparently. To claim those things did not happen is a shame and a lie. Yes, lie.

You have jumped the shark once again!

Where did I (or she through me) say that these things did not happen? In fact, I'm pretty sure that she (through me) said:

everyone in her peer group knew they were breaking the law with their actions and going to jail (and the beatings) were part of the journey; whereas, the modern day protesters want to have it both ways ... they want to be free to break whatever laws they feel are unjust, protest against the corrupt government and all. Then, they want to be protected (not pay a price) for their "noble sacrifice" ... oftentimes demanding that that protection come from the very government they are disobeying.

69. When you make claims about 'modern day protesters' that is what you are doing.

You say they are all entitled and expect no repercussions for their actions. 'Want to be free to break whatever laws....'
It is bullshit. Pure, stinking bullshit.

And try to be mature enough to keep your petty personal comments about me to yourself and speak of the subject at hand. What do you gain from the wise crackery when the subject is people who sacrificed for the both of us? You tell me.

15. Wish I could recommend. nt

23. Isn't/shouldn't ...

there be an expected price to be paid for challenging the status quo?

When I, at the age of 7, sat at the Woolworth's counter (with my parents), they told me that I was violated the law and that I should expect to be arrested (the price of breaking the law). They then explained WHY they were going to seat at the counter ... I readily agreed, even though I didn't comprehend the price I might have paid.

What my dinner companion lamented was that todays protests want to raise hell at no personal expense.

24. And that is where you are wrong

26. Please ...

inform me as to my error.

OWSers willingly "suffered" the price of their conviction ... just as the Civil Rights folks of old.

This group (the bistro snowden fans) admired snowden's strategy of escaping/avoiding paying the price ...other than having to live in fear of extradiction/prosecution ... while living in a 4 star hotel.

There is a difference ... and that is what I think my dinner guest was lamenting.

28. I think ...

we have a broken connection.

My dinner guest was syaing that she and her cohort were willing to suffer the price of their protest, included having criminal records, getting the crap kicked out of them, etc., believing, and acepting, that that was a small price to pay for acting on their belief.

Knowingly breaking the law ... then complaining about your treatment (to the big bad government that 30 seconds ago you were calling big and bad) doesn't exactly make you a hero.

38. I, also, ...

understand why snowden did what he did. He believed that the government is out of control. Fine.

But my OP was not so much about snowden, the NSA or the government ... it was about the belief of those in the overheard conversation that it is Ok to (knowingly) break the law AND feel justified in attempting to escape sanction under the law ... because you disagree with the law.

If your coinviction would have you break a law ... that ame conviction would/should have you PROUD to suffer the cost.

42. No ...

I am defending my dinner guest's position, that I happen to agree with based on my personal experience in Civil Disobedience, i.e., when one knowingly breaks the law, one must be willing to pay a price.

9. Tell that to Occupy.

Tell that to the student protestors who WERE brutalized by police.( Did she REALLY not know about the sadistic pepper spray attacks?)
Tell that to the dead protestors in Oakland, Ca. and Egypt, Spain, Turkey, Iran, Greece, etc.

48. Exactly the opposite ...

snowden planned that his disclosures to the chinese would protect/shield his prosecution here in the U.S. ... The OWSers have no such plans ... they protest, they get arrested/beat, they protest some more.

52. What has he disclosed to the Chinese?

That the U.S. tries to hack them? I could have told them that, just like the Chinese hack us. Yet another attempt to smear Snowden, this time using a civil rights veteran. How low.... The OWSers left the scene after their protests. Very different than the civil rights people.

16. They have ordered a couple back hoes

18. This was NOT an anti-snowden post ...

but your identifying it as so, suggests a couple conclusions; but I'm not trying to argue/give you a platform for snowden, when this post has very little to do with snowden, but everything to do with "this generation of protesters."

54. I feel like it is in a way

I think he did the right thing and I say this as a person who protested a lot during the Vietnam war. There is no place he would have been safe in this country. If he has more information to reveal there is no way he could do it here in the States. He is paying a huge price by losing everything, his family, sig other, job, home, parents,and probably down the road his freedom or life. That is a lot for a young man to give up for a matter of conscience.

87. I knew I would not have to give all that up to make my statement

I knew I might get beat up and arrested but I knew I had the support around me of my family and friends. A lot of people did leave as a matter of conscience and went to Canada after being drafted. I am a woman and did not have to deal with that issue.

51. Programming is a PITA because computers do what you told them to do not what you think you told them

Humans are a lot worse than computers at misinterpreting stuff and English is a lot harder to write unambiguous code in than many programming languages.

Both ends of the writing/reading process are difficult and fraught with error, it's actually a minor or not so minor miracle we can communicate this way at all. We are pattern recognizing machines and have a real bias toward finding familiar patterns even in random noise.

You ever know someone who could make a double entendre of nearly anything?

70. Yes ...

I think that was the underlying sentiment of her observation ... except she limited that to those that would knowingly break the law, then whine that the law called them to account.

If your message is the protest, then you do not call attention to your own sacrifice ... I doubt those friends you cite spent much time calling press conferences about their being locked up ... did they?

76. Please place me on ignore.

78. Again, I do as I please, not as commanded by mendacious strangers on the internet

Clear enough for you? Barking orders at others is indicative of panic and of control issues. Can't blame you for not liking the links, history and facts that make this OP seem so vaporous.
Others can read the links, and see what they think! You can remain without information if you wish, of course.

84. Suffering police brutality is not a lawful price of peaceful civil disobedience

I guess what I don't understand is how you (and your friend) can insist that for protesters to be pure and noble they must accept beatings and brutality as "part of the journey," surrendering their civil rights and forfeiting recourse to pursue justice.

Occupiers around the country have faced the consequences of civil disobedience without surrendering their rights. They have engaged in marches and potests specifically directed against police brutality; have availed themselves of legal representation in court and in many cases have successfully defended against the government's charges or succeeded in getting them dropped by authorities; and in some cases (including Scott Olsen's) have filed lawsuits against government agencies and personnel for police brutality and other unlawful actions.

Even MLK objected strongly to police brutality and organized hearings on the subject by SCLC.

85. i seriously dont understand why suffering should be a natural expectation

89. Indeed, this whole suffering-bravery-cowardice sweepstakes is enough to

turn one's stomach (and really pisses me off). One could argue that, because MLK, Jr. was not willing to set himself on fire (as did Norman Morrison), that somehow MLK didn't quite measure up. Or that because Rosa Parks wasn't killed by Montgomery Police (as was the civil rights activist William Moore while walking down a lonely Alabama highway), that somehow Parks didn't quite measure up. That's the reductio ad absurdum that ineluctably follows from this OP. Enough!

Dr. King lived with the threat of death every day of his public ministry. The fact that he finally was assassinated is merely proof of that. But he faced that life with courage, with magnanimity, with forcefulness. He didn’t write his letter in exile from Havana; he wrote it right there in a Birmingham jail, one of many times he was in jail for acts of conscience. He didn’t abandon the people and country he purported to care about; he lived their lives, shared their fears and hopes, tried to bring justice to a country which had lacked it for so long.

Mrs. Parks didn’t hightail it to Rio to rail against how evil the US government was. After her act on the bus, she accepted the mantle of civil rights symbol, which came with its own dangers. Her home was here, her people were here, and she faced any dangers with the same bravery and grace that Dr. King did.

What both Dr. King and Mrs. Parks knew was what Glenn Greenwald and Snowden refuse to acknowledge: the US, for all its many faults, is perfectable. It can change. It can grow. It can evolve. President Lincoln knew the same thing, which is why he fought to save the Union, rather than have the Great Experiment splinter into its constituent parts. When you send yourself into exile, and yet continue to speak about the country as if you have any actual care for it, then you’ve lost all right to criticize.

I’m not sure what it was that Snowden feared. An open trial before a jury of his peers? He and Greenwald want to be seen as heroes, exposing US perfidy—or, more specifically, Obama’s perfidy. But they’re not willing to accept the consequences of their actions. The do it from safe perches, where they think they’ll be beyond the reach of the US."

91. This is not about Obama

Much as the author might wish it to be, and if it were about Obama then it makes Obama look bad.

As for civil rights, there are many civil rights thinkers and liberal black journalists who are constantly "mystified" (according to their numerous editorials in mainstream liberal publications) at the willingness of people to support everything Obama does just because his enemies don't like him.

90. As the child of a whistleblower

Whistleblowers, Whistleblower protection groups, and dissidents in countries with weak civil liberties (which we are not yet, but are moving towards in part thanks to Bush and with no letup since) are three groups of civil disobedients who are the most core original advocates of anonymous disclosures. If Snowden had wanted to escape arrest he would have / should have remained anonymous (according to lawyers who are experts in whistleblower cases.)

The reason Ghandian civil disobedience works is that you are going up against a regime that is unwilling to simply kill everypony, or cause you to disappear. When dealing with "war on terror" stuff, we do not know if that is the case.

Not the first one, obviously, that would be China or Syria (which is why it mystifies me that Snowden fled to China.) But we have to be careful not to become one of those democratic South American countries like the red scares of the 1970s and 1980s where people simply went missing.

That's also why the Vietnam war era protests (my impression, but correct me if I'm wrong) folded like a wet blanket after Kent State.

(Well, that and the fact that the majority of Baby Boomers were anti-hippie and pro-war -- it was the WWII era GREATEST GENERATION that went into the 60s as liberals and voted to end the war -- according to polls! The hippies were a minority of liberal children of the last widespread "liberal generation" in the US. And yes, I'm pro hippie)

Even today, Peggy Noonan of all people claims of the people she talks to, "young people have no problem with being spied on" because they don't remember a time when there was a distinction between the public and the private realm; "middle-aged people are too scared" of terrorism to do anything but let it continue; and it is the elderly who are most often staunchly against it and willing to risk safety for liberty. (she's against it)

Now I don't know if that's true of today's generation, that true liberals and civil libertarians are a minority of a mostly apathetic generation, as the Silent Generation was accused of.

As far as the people at the next table go -- lets be honest. The only reason I'm not rooting for Snowden to get away scot-free is because it would make him more likely to quietly "disappear" in some foriegn country. In today's America, which is beseiged by propaganda and China style conformism, his capture would only lead to most Americans rallying to see him waterboarded and in favor of being spied on. Too bad that rule by the opinions of the majority is not how civil rights operates, but it's how our courts and quasi-neo-conservative communitarian fuzzy-headed American thinking works. So that's another a reason to root for him not to be captured, because it will force the issue, and we've seen how Americans have landed on every issue when forced.